


I Know My Value

by Lauralot



Series: Alexander Pierce should have died slower [21]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Deaf Clint Barton, Disabled Character, Gen, Non-Sexual Age Play, Panic Attacks, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 17:17:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5299787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauralot/pseuds/Lauralot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky decides he wants to give back to the world.</p><p>Peggy Carter has some sage advice for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Know My Value

**“I know my value. Anyone else’s opinion doesn’t really matter.”**

—Peggy Carter, _Agent Carter_

  


The TV is on.

Bucky’s heart sinks a little. He wanted to see if Daddy would read to him, but if Daddy’s watching something, he probably won’t want to. Maybe whatever he’s watching is good, but it sounds like the news. Bucky hates the news. It’s always either boring or really sad and scary. He’d rather go without any stories than have to sit through the news first.

But he can hear Daddy’s voice, and Clint’s, so maybe they’re not really watching the news either. Bucky Bear says that the news isn’t worth watching most of the time anyway. Bucky steps out of the elevator, inching forward. He can wait until a commercial to ask.

“—I’m not going to let him sit there and run his mouth about—”

“Steve, don’t. You’ll only encourage it.”

Bucky frowns. It’s normal for Clint to talk loud. Even with his hearing aids, it’s hard for him to tell sounds apart a lot of the time, and when that happens he usually talks louder, because he can’t tell how much noise is going on around him. But Daddy’s loud too, almost yelling. And it’s not like he needs to do that to be heard.

“He’s been through enough and now they’re dragging his name through the mud just for—”

Bucky doesn’t hear what Daddy says next because someone on the TV says “Barnes.”

He freezes.

“—expects us to believe he had no choice?” says the man on TV. Bucky’s just inside the living room now, and he can see what kind of show this is. It’s not really news, but it is a group of news reporters at a table arguing with each other. “Then why isn’t he out there now? Stark’s appointed his own army to watch over the country—you never see the Winter Soldier with them.”

“You don’t think that severe trauma—” another man begins, but then there’s a woman talking over him.

“If they’re going to claim he’s too broken to fight,” she says. “Then he ought to be out cleaning up his messes. They’re still rebuilding DC thanks to Barnes. Where’s he? Stark’s legal team claims he’s a child now; well, my kids know that when you make a mess, you pick it up.”

The man who was interrupted before tries to speak again. “Sergeant Barnes would be risking his safety if—”

“ _His_ safety? He’s the Winter Soldier. What about our safety? No one considered that when they let him buy his way out of being institutionalized!”

“Bastards.” Daddy sounds like he’s growling. “If they experienced even half of what he suffered, they’d be catatonic. They’d never have survived—”

“Steve,” Clint says, and from the corner of his eye, Bucky can see Clint’s hands moving, signing. He turns to see, but Clint’s stopped by then.

“Mute,” Daddy says, staring at Bucky, and the TV goes silent. The subtitles for Clint are still scrolling across the bottom of the screen, covering up the news feed. Daddy looks pale. “Bucky,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“They were talking about me,” Bucky mutters. In his arms, Bucky Bear wants to find these people and tear their heads off. Bucky doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want to cry or throw up either, but both of those are looking more and more likely with every passing second.

“JARVIS, turn the TV off,” Daddy says. The screen goes black, and Daddy gets up from the couch, coming over and putting his hands on Bucky’s shoulders. “Listen to me, lamb. Those people are _idiots_. They just say mean things to make people mad and get them talking about their awful show. Don’t let them make you upset, Bucky. They’re not worth it.”

“They made you upset,” Bucky whispers. He can feel his eyes getting wet.

“Your daddy has terrible taste in television.” Clint’s standing up now. “Don’t worry about that sh—stuff, Bucky. Steve just likes to raise his blood pressure for fun, that’s all.”

People are still talking about him.

That shouldn’t be a surprise. When SHIELD was here, Daddy told Agent Coulson that they were getting angry letters, months and months after the trial. But Bucky had hoped that those letters were just from a few people who couldn’t let it go. He hadn’t thought that everybody still hated him enough to talk about it on TV.

He’d hoped that he could just go back to the tower and hide, and then everyone would forget about him. It was a stupid thing to wish for. How many people has he killed? How many more people are still alive, hurting, because Bucky took away someone they loved?

“Here.” Clint takes his hand. “You know the best way to cheer up? Cookies.”

Bucky lets Clint lead him to the kitchen, even though he shouldn’t have any cookies. He doesn’t deserve them. He doesn’t deserve to hide here, protected from everybody who’s mad at him. Why should he have Bearvengers and bedtime stories and cookies when there are people out there without daddies or mommies or best friends anymore, because of him?

Clint gives him a whole plate of cookies. They feel like rocks settling in his tummy, dragging him down.

*

The Soldier opens the cabinet, frowning. He shifts around boxes of crackers and other things, searching, and draws back empty-handed.

“Need something?” Steve asks.

The Soldier shuts the cabinet. He waits for approximately ten seconds before opening it a second time. Again, he is disappointed.

“Bucky,” Steve says. Steve is still in his pajamas, hair tousled, halfway through a plate of scrambled eggs. The Soldier has been up for one hour and has already showered, watered Steve’s African violet, and started laundry. That’s two stars on the chart before breakfast. That is an accomplishment worthy of cookies.

But there aren’t any cookies.

Right where the box of cookies always sits, there’s only a blank space. The crackers are still there. The little cheddar fish that float around in bowls of soup are still there. But no cookies.

The Soldier feels himself frown.

“Buck,” Steve says. He’s standing up. “What are you looking for?”

The Soldier tries to keep the disappointment from his face as he turns around. “There aren’t any cookies,” he says. “They’re supposed to be right here.”

Steve smiles. “Right. You ate them with Clint last night. He tried to challenge me to a contest to prove he could eat them faster, remember?”

“But that was yesterday,” the Soldier says.

“And?”

“It’s not yesterday anymore.” Over twelve hours have passed between that moment and this morning. The cookies ought to be replenished.

Steve nods, but it doesn’t feel like he’s agreeing. “Do you remember what your therapists told you about consequences?”

“That I need to consider the outcome of my actions in the long term,” the Soldier recites. “That I should keep in mind that months don’t pass when I sleep anymore, and my choices from yesterday still affect today.”

“And yesterday you ate all the cookies,” Steve says. He pats the Soldier’s shoulder before returning to his breakfast. “So what do you think we can do now?”

The Soldier glances back at the cabinet. He has a feeling that checking again is not the right answer.

Steve waits for fifteen seconds before he speaks again. “Maybe we can make some more,” he suggests. “Does that sound like a good plan?”

But the Soldier doesn’t want to make cookies. He wants to eat them.

“Buck?”

“I’m going out,” he says. He will need to retrieve shoes.

“To buy more cookies?”

“To see the Commander.” He turns away before he can see a dismayed look begin on Steve’s face. “He always has cookies.”

*

With every bite Bucky takes, there’s a crunch. With every crunch, a few crumbs fall onto his shirt, and Rumlow’s eye twitches.

“Next time you want cookies,” he says, as Bucky lowers his hand into the bag and comes up empty-handed, “make sure you don’t want ‘em at eight in the goddamn morning.”

“You were a STRIKE agent,” Bucky says. He brushes off his shirt, letting the cookie crumbs fall to the floor. Rumlow has a Roomba, after all. “Like you didn’t used to get up earlier than this every day.”

“‘Used to’ being the operative words. Throw that away.”

Bucky crumples the bag in his hands as he walks toward the trash can. It’s almost overflowing. No doubt Rumlow will tell him to take it out when he leaves. “You know that you don’t have to babysit me, right? It’s not like I’m going to choke because you weren’t here to watch me eat.”

“I don’t trust you not to set the place on fire,” Rumlow says. “Or choke out of spite. Is there anything else you need? Want me to run to the store for some ice cream? Or can I go back to bed?”

Bucky doesn’t gag at the mention of ice cream, although his stomach gives a violent lurch. “Careful. One of these days, I’ll be too little to know when you’re being more of a sarcastic ass than usual, and I’ll probably demand a soufflé or something. And have a tantrum when you don’t have the mobility to pull it off.”

“You wouldn’t throw a tantrum, Winter. You’d sniffle once, I’d give you a look, and that would be the end of it.”

Bucky tells himself that’s not true, shoving his chair back and picking up his bear.

“Well,” he says. “I’m sure you’ve got a long day of moping in bed ahead of you, and I wouldn’t want to disrupt that.” But he doesn’t move to the door. Rumlow’s laptop is on the coffee table, and before he can even think, Bucky finds himself beelining toward it.

“The hell?” Rumlow asks as Bucky sits down and opens the laptop. “Weren’t you leaving?”

“Not yet.” Rumlow hasn’t even bothered to set a password. He must figure there’s no one in the world who gives a shit what he has to say anymore. “I bet I can get your blood pressure way higher than this.”

“Can’t you look up porn on Stark’s servers?” The last few words are distorted by a yawn. From the look of him, if Rumlow even rested his head on the table, he’d be out just like that. “Or would your daddy disapprove?”

“Might as well give the people spying on you something to look at,” Bucky counters. It’s not like Steve checks his Internet history. Hell, Bucky’s pretty sure that unless they’re watching something illegal, JARVIS is probably instructed to politely look away whenever anyone at the tower decides to rub one out. Bucky wouldn’t know; he’s never tried. And it’s not like he’s looking for porn anyway.

Porn would probably be freely available if he wanted it. Any mention of himself online, however, is blocked.

The filter’s been in place since before the trial even began. No one wanted Bucky to find people talking about how the Soldier deserved to be die, worried he’d work himself into a panic attack or self harm. He can read anything covering up to the point where he fell from the train; anything after that is restricted. Likewise, he can’t look up Alexander Pierce, HYDRA, or anything current mentioning Steve if Bucky’s also mentioned. Even on the things he is allowed to read about himself, the comments are inevitably blocked.

He navigates to Google and types ‘Bucky Barnes’ into the search bar. He doesn’t even need to hit enter before the page fills with results. Bucky scrolls past the Wikipedia links, cursor hovering over the first news article with his name. His chest tightens as if something is squeezing his heart, warning him not to do this.

He thinks of Pierce’s housekeeper, looking more bewildered than horrified as her boss had fired the Soldier’s gun at her. She’s shown up in his nightmares lately. All that woman had done was look at his arm; he didn’t even have to touch a weapon to kill her. Did she have a family?

Bucky clicks the link.

It’s not an editorial piece, just an emotionless news report. It’s not even about him per se, but the judge who presided over his case. There was some petition recently to have him disbarred, an online thing that had no chance of being taken seriously, but that had nonetheless gathered a lot of attention. The reason they were calling for the judge’s head is because of Bucky, like they didn’t grasp that it was the jury found him not guilty. There was an official statement about the petition being a load of bull, although it was politely and professionally worded, and that’s what the article’s about.

He clicks to load the comments.

 _About time someone put an end to this circus_ , the first comment says. _It’s horrifying how many people in this country have no idea how our justice system works._

There’s a reply below that. _pLEASE, you think the system works? Like Iron Man didn’t buy that trial, WAKE UP people._

There are so many comments. Every time Bucky thinks he’s scrolled to the bottom of the list, more of them load.

_it doesnt matter WHO decided to let him walk! If the Winter Soldier can run around murdering people for hydra and not even get a slap on the wrist than the system’s broken! Why aren’t people out in the streets over this?!_

_This judge isn’t responsible for the jury’s stupidity. Be angry at them. Or better yet, at the man who committed all the atrocities to begin with._

_it’s R I D I C U L O U S that barnes isn’t on death row. when are people going to realize that the government only gives a shit about the rich, and go storm stark’s penthouse for real justice?_

_I threw away my son’s Captain America action figures when this whole mess started. I can’t stand by him if he’s willing to stand by a terrorist. This is NOT what America needs representing us._

_WTF is wrong with you people? Did you watch the trial at all, or just go by the shit they told you to think on Faux News? Bucky Barnes was brainwashed, tortured, and RAPED! He’s an American hero, and all of you blaming the victim for things he was forced to do are the real disgrace to this country. Disgusting._

_Oh sure, the poor little mentally ill white mass murderer. If he was black they wouldn’t even have tried take him into custody. He’d be dead in a gutter and you’d all be thanking the cops for keeping us safe._

_Don’t play the race card. He’s only alive thanks to Stark’s money and Captain America’s reputation._

_How DARE you tell me to feel sorry that monster. My aunt is DEAD because of him. I wish there was a hell for Barnes to burn in._

_LOL i cant believe anyone’s stupid enough to buy that story about Pierce touching the Soldier’s naughty bits. Did you see him at the trial pretending to cry? LMAFO so fake!!_

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to Google yourself?”

Bucky starts. Rumlow’s right behind him, leaning down to read over his shoulder, and he has to shift to keep Bucky’s head from slamming into his face. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to think about reaching over and shutting off the computer before I decided you’d break my wrist.” Straightening up, Rumlow shakes his head. “I take it Cap shields you from all the nasty Internet comments and tabloid articles when you’re home?”

“I—” Bucky closes the browser. Shutting his eyes, he breathes in deeply. “I’ve never seen what people say about me before. I mean, they screamed stuff when I was going and coming from the court house, but...” He shrugs, speechless. His hands are trembling.

“Welcome to every day of my life when I bother to go out,” Rumlow says. “And then imagine you’re scarred up and not a super soldier. Sorry if I’m not drowning in sympathy for you.”

When Bucky stands up, his legs threaten to give out beneath him. He feels light-headed, throat dry. “I—I should go. I need to go home.”

“Use the door,” Rumlow says, and today there’s no pleasure in obeying.

*

“Red Panda thinks you need to smile more,” Tasha says, nuzzling her panda’s nose against his cheek.

Bucky tries to smile. He’s been trying to smile all day, ever since he got back from the Commander’s and Daddy asked what was wrong. But every time he tries, all Bucky can think of are those comments online.

_My aunt is dead because of him._

“I don’t feel good,” Bucky says.

Tasha frowns. She picks up Bucky Bear, who had been helping Red Panda dig a moat for their Bear Castle, and settles him in Bucky’s hands. “Bucky Bear will help.”

Bucky shrugs as well as he can while lying down on his bed. Bucky Bear isn’t happy either. His seams feel strained; he wants to track down the people who wrote those things and tear out their insides, but he’s also scared they might be right. And now Bucky’s worried his bear’s seams will rip on top of everything else.

_It’s ridiculous that Barnes isn’t on death row._

And it is.

After the trial, Daddy and Maria and everybody else said that they always knew the jury would find Bucky innocent. And they told him that over and over before the verdict came out: No one with a functioning brain could sit through the defense’s case and think that Bucky was at all responsible for what the Winter Soldier did.

Whenever they said it, Bucky would think that he must not have a functioning brain. But that wasn’t really a surprise.

He’d wanted to succeed on missions. Sometimes, if a target was difficult, he would be angry. He felt warm inside if he accomplished a particularly tricky kill, because he knew Pierce would be proud of him. He hadn’t liked killing, but he’d liked making his master happy. He’d wanted to help save the world.

“I think you need more bears,” Tasha says. She’s setting the Bearvengers all around him, and Bucky can’t even bring himself to pay attention to their layout. How the Bearvengers sit is really important. If Captain Ameribear and Iron Bear are right next to each other, there are usually arguments. And if Hawkbear and Iron Bear are beside each other, a lot of times they come up with not so great plans, and Pepper Bear and Bear Widow have to intervene.

But Tasha knows all of that, so she’s probably arranging them right.

 _My kids know when you make a mess, you clean it up_ , the lady on TV had said.

 _There have to be reparations_ , Bucky had told Steve in the months before the trial.

But how can he make up for all the problems he’s caused when he can’t go into the field? When he can’t even hold a knife?

“There,” Tasha says, putting Bear Widow right next to his head. “Feel better?”

Bucky looks at the bears. They should help. They always help. But now their eyes just seem black and cold and judging.

*

“I think Pepper must have put a cap on how many new suits Tony can make in a month,” Clint is saying. “He keeps showing up at my apartment with all this stuff.” He flaps his hands as though he can’t even think of the signs to describe it. “Like, ‘Hey Clint! I made you this wristwatch that vibrates when someone’s asking to be buzzed in.’ Okay, great! I don’t need it at the Tower, since Jarvis just tells me, but that works for my building, you know?”

Bucky nods. The walk sign illuminates, and they start moving across the crosswalk.

“Except it also vibrates when there’s a fire alarm. Or if carbon monoxide’s detected. Or if there’s a weather alert. So then I asked why he didn’t make it, I don’t know, change temperature or light up for different stuff, and he just stared and me and I think he said he’d run out of coffee. I don’t really know. He was mumbling.”

There’s a homeless man farther up on the sidewalk, a pair of scratched sunglasses on his face and a barely legible cardboard sign clutched in his hands. _Blinded by IED. Please help._

Bucky digs in his pocket and pulls out his wallet. “Tony builds things faster than he thinks sometimes,” he says, making sure that Clint’s looking at him before he speaks.

Clint snorts. “You can say that again. I’m half-expecting him to repurpose one of his suits to run the building for me. I’m surprised he hasn’t give _you_ a collection of Inspector Gadget arms. ‘This one’s got a propeller! This one shoots lasers! This one has a built in can opener!’”

Bucky doesn’t say that his arm wouldn’t come off without major surgery because he’s busy looking at the blind veteran, placing a crumpled fifty in his cup. 

“Remind me why we’re walking to a coffee shop again?” Clint asks. “I mean, I get wanting fresh air, but I’m pretty sure Tony has every fancy beverage machine in existence, and it’s all free.” 

Bucky takes Clint’s hand, steering him off of the sidewalk and onto a bus stop bench. “We’re not going to a coffee shop,” he says. Now that they’re not moving, he feels exposed, sitting on his hand to keep from tugging the brim of his baseball cap down over his face. There’s already enough background noise to make this hard for Clint without obstructing his vision on top of it. “I’m sorry I lied.”

Clint stares. He doesn’t reach for his cell phone or make any other movements that could set Bucky off, had Bucky lost his mind like Clint is probably thinking. He’s too smart for that. “Okay,” he says, and he sounds calm. “Then where are we going?”

“I know that you go to a gun range sometimes,” Bucky says. Clint carries guns on missions. It’s just that nine times out of ten, he’ll go with an arrow instead of a bullet. But he still practices with his guns. Bucky’s heard him mention it to Natasha before.

“No,” Clint says. “Bucky, no. If this is about what you heard on TV—”

“It’s not! I don’t want to shoot anything!” He’s speaking too fast. Bucky forces himself to slow down and try again. “I don’t want to _use_ guns.” Not right now. It’s too much of a risk. “I just don’t want to be so afraid of them anymore. It’s dangerous. If something bad happens after a mission and you guys have to rush inside the tower without disarming, I have to know that I won’t panic and hurt anyone. I just want to go to a place with weapons. I don’t want to use them. That’s all.”

“I can’t do that,” Clint insists. “Steve would—”

“It’s not Steve’s choice! It’s mine.”

“You’d need your therapists there to try something like this,” Clint continues. He probably didn’t even catch what Bucky said; Bucky was speaking too quickly again. “And backup, so everyone would be safe if something bad did happen. And that’s not how exposure therapy even works, Bucky. You don’t charge into a place full of whatever scares you. First you just _think_ about it, and then doctors show you pictures, and then—”

He has been thinking about it. That’s all he’s been able to think about since yesterday when Tasha was burying him in a pile of bears. Holding a gun without snapping and firing at Steve. Being sure he won’t turn into a frightened child if he comes face to face with a threat in the field. Eliminating a target without feeling compelled to turn the gun on himself for all the awful things he’s done. Taking aim and not jerking away from the touch of weapon as though he’s been burned.

“Bucky,” Clint says.

He’s never going to _like_ it. He never liked the bloody bodies before, or the screaming and begging that made his head throb. But it’s not about his comfort. He doesn’t deserve comfort, not with all this innocent blood on his hands. If he’s not going to spend his life sealed off in prison, then he’s obligated to try and atone. Bucky doesn’t remember most of his youth, but he knows that was a lesson the priest taught before confirmation. If a person can do good and doesn’t, that’s just as much of a sin as doing something bad.

Bucky’s been bad enough. How can he care about his own happiness after he’s hurt so many people?

“I can do it!”

But Clint’s shaking his head.

“I can,” Bucky protests. His eyes feel hot. No, he can’t cry here, or Clint will never say yes. He _can’t_. “I can do it, I promise. I’ll be good—I won’t panic. You don’t have to worry about me. You don’t.”

But tears are spilling down his face as Clint pulls him into a hug, and Bucky’s never going to be able to redeem his sins.

*

Daddy didn’t want Bucky to come see Peggy today.

He was really worried after Clint brought Bucky back home yesterday and told Daddy that Bucky had tried to get Clint to bring him to a shooting range. He’d even come to Bucky’s therapy session in the afternoon to talk about it. Daddy kept blaming himself for Bucky hearing the people talking about him on TV, and he said over and over that Bucky hadn’t done anything wrong and didn’t need to feel bad.

That’s easy for Daddy to say. He can go on all the missions he wants, and he’s never killed a bunch of innocent people.

Daddy said Bucky was clearly very upset and stressed, and maybe driving all the way to DC today to talk to Peggy wasn’t a good idea.

But Cornelius and Miriam had said that seeing an old friend who knew Bucky before he was the Winter Soldier could help. And Bucky had cried and pleaded until Daddy said yes.

But now, waiting in the hall outside Peggy’s room while Daddy talks to her, Bucky thinks that this was probably a bad idea.

He hasn’t seen Peggy since the forties. At first, Daddy couldn’t bring Bucky to visit because nobody was supposed to know that Bucky was with the Avengers, and Peggy doesn’t remember things very well anymore, so she might have talked about him to the nurses. And because people saw the videos and pictures of Daddy hugging the Winter Soldier when he found him, if Peggy did say Daddy brought Bucky to see her, some of the staff might have told that to reporters or the police.

Then people knew about Bucky, but he wasn’t allowed to visit because he was under house arrest waiting for the trial. And after he was found not guilty, they had to apply for special permission for Bucky to be allowed to leave the state, and Daddy had to tell Peggy about what Bucky’s like now and how to talk to him. He had to tell her a lot, because Peggy forgets stuff now.

Daddy’s in Peggy’s room making sure that she remembers he was bringing Bucky today, and making sure that she remembers Bucky’s five sometimes.

Bucky squeezes Bucky Bear’s feet. Bucky Bear is here for moral support, and also to eat anyone if somebody needs to be eaten. Daddy said that wasn’t very likely, but Bucky Bear said you can never really know.

Maybe Peggy won’t like him anymore. The Bucky that she knew was a grown-up and a sniper, not a little kid who’s afraid of everything. Plus, Peggy helped make SHIELD with Howard, and then HYDRA ruined it. Bucky was part of HYDRA. And he killed Howard. Peggy probably hates him now.

His stomach is full of butterflies, and Bucky’s pretty sure that if he opens his mouth, all the butterflies will come out along with his breakfast from earlier. He’s scared to see Peggy, and not even just because she’s going to hate him. She’s really old now. The Peggy he remembers was young and beautiful and had a really pretty dress. He has no idea she looks like anymore, except that she’s old and sick.

What kind of awful, stupid friend is afraid to see someone because they’re old?

Daddy’s been in Peggy’s room for a long time. Maybe Peggy doesn’t want to see him. She might have forgotten about him. She might have even forgotten about Daddy, because Daddy says that sometimes when he goes to see her, she doesn’t remember that he’s back from the ice. Daddy’s eyes were all wet when he told Bucky that.

Bucky hopes that Peggy at least remembers Daddy today. He doesn’t like watching Daddy cry.

And when he steps out of Peggy’s room, Daddy isn’t crying. He’s smiling, but it doesn’t seem forced. “Come on in, Bucky,” he says. “She’s excited to see you.”

Bucky tries to believe that.

Peggy’s lying in bed, mostly covered up with blankets. He thinks she’s wearing a nightgown. She still has long hair, but it’s all white and gray now instead of dark. She looks old, but her eyes are still like the woman he remembers. She smiles at him, and Bucky hides his face behind his bear.

“I know my memory’s gone to pieces, but I’m certain you were never _shy_.” Peggy’s voice is a little shaky, but other than that, she sounds just like she used to.

“Hi,” Bucky mumbles against Bucky Bear’s fur. She probably can’t hear him. He tries again, louder. “Hello.”

“Hello, Bucky,” she says. “Now, can you look at me so I can say it’s good to see you?”

Bucky manages to stare over the top of Bucky Bear’s head. He’s pretty sure his eyes are visible between the bear’s ears.

“You’re worse than my great-grandchildren,” Peggy says, but she’s smiling. “How have you been, Bucky?”

“Fine.” Bucky Bear’s fur tickles his lips when he talks. It occurs to him that he doesn’t have a Peggy Bear. He needs one. She could have weddings with Captain Ameribear. And also fight evil.

Then he imagines Peggy Bear and Bucky Bear fighting, and his tummy hurts again.

Peggy coughs. It’s a loud, harsh noise that’s nothing like her voice. Bucky steps back, lowering his bear so he can hug onto him. Daddy takes a pitcher that’s next to the bed and pours all the water in it into a plastic cup that he gives to Peggy.

“I’ll get some more water,” he says.

Peggy lowers the cup. “You could call the nurse—” she begins, but Daddy’s already out in the hall.

“I suppose he’s never stopped dashing about as though he’s personally responsible for everything in the world, then?” Peggy asks, looking at Bucky.

He nods.

“I don’t know why I’d have expected otherwise.” She puts the cup back on the bedside tray. “At least he has you to stop him from leaping onto grenades now.”

Bucky buries his face back against the bear. He can’t even shake his head.

“Bucky?”

“I can’t stop him from doing anything!” Bucky Bear’s fur doesn’t seem soft anymore. It’s making his face feel itchy and red, and he’s afraid that he’ll start crying. “I can’t go into the field or help him with missions now! I’m not even allowed to slice bread anymore! The last time I held a knife, I thought I was the Soldier and I tried to hurt him!”

“That’s—” Peggy begins, but Bucky’s looking up now and he can’t stop talking. Yelling.

“I’m so sorry you made SHIELD to help people and then HYDRA ruined it and I helped them ruin everything and I want to help because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you break things but I _can’t!_ Just thinking about holding a gun makes me want to cry now and I’m scared I’ll hurt innocent people by accident and I can’t be a soldier anymore! I’m useless! I can’t help anybody.”

Bucky’s crying. This is _awful_. He was supposed to be here to cheer Peggy up and now he’s yelled and reminded her of all kinds of horrible things. He can’t be a good soldier, and now he can’t even be a good _friend_. And Peggy’s just staring at him. She must hate him.

“My God,” Peggy says. “What nonsense.”

Bucky wipes at his eyes. Peggy looks disgusted. Why shouldn’t she? He’s disgusting.

“Do you honestly think that your only worth lies in your ability to shoot people?” Peggy demands. “You already served your country. You gave your life for it. Why compel yourself back into something you hate now that your service is up?”

“But what I want shouldn’t matter,” Bucky protests. He’s not supposed to talk back to grown-ups, but he can’t stop himself. Bucky Bear feels all squirmy and worried in his arms because he’s acting so bad. “I spent seventy years killing people for HYDRA. I need to pay for my mistakes—”

“You’re just as dramatic as Steve, aren’t you? Stop that talk. I heard enough of it in the editorials during your trial.” Peggy sighs. She sits up a little in the bed, and Bucky’s pretty sure she does that just to shake her head at him. “You were no more responsible in the things HYDRA made you do than the guns that you fired were. I won’t sit here and let you smear your own good name before me, Bucky. I’ve listened to too many ignorant opinions of your person, and I wouldn’t have expected your own words to be among them.”

“But—” Bucky begins.

“Don’t speak over your elders,” Peggy orders, and he shuts his mouth. “You were made into a weapon against your will. Of course you don’t want to keep fighting after that. I dare say you’re far more sensible than Steve could ever be in that regard.”

Bucky thinks Daddy’s definitely more sensible than someone talks to his teddy bears and needs a nightlight to sleep, but Peggy told him not to talk, so he doesn’t say that.

“You don’t owe anyone an apology for something you had no choice in,” Peggy continues. “If you _want_ to contribute something positive to society, that’s another matter entirely. And you certainly don’t have to be a soldier to do that. Do you think when SHIELD was founded, I was envisioning every member marching into battle? Do you think that nurses or firefighters or teachers aren’t doing meaningful work?”

He’s not sure if he’s meant to respond to that, and Bucky Bear doesn’t have any answers when Bucky looks at him. “But I can’t do those things either.”

“There must be something you’re capable of doing,” Peggy says. The look in her eyes makes Bucky shift, like she’s caught him doing something wrong. “I’m certain you weren’t planning to live your life as a soldier before the war began.”

“I don’t remember.” His real daddy had been a soldier. Maybe that was why Bucky became one.

Peggy just waves her hand like that doesn’t matter. “Then find something you want to do now. There’s no shortage of ways for you to help people if that’s what you want, Bucky. You can do it from a desk. From your home. You don’t have to run around shooting things unless that’s what you want.”

“It doesn’t make you mad that I’m not fixing stuff with the Avengers?”

“Why on Earth would I be angry about that?” Peggy’s shaking her head again. “My God, Bucky, do you think you’re the first man I’ve met to be shell-shocked? I’ve known so many people who’ve been traumatized or crippled. One of my dearest friends lost his leg in the war. It never stopped him from helping people. Adapt. Don’t give up.”

“He lost his leg?” Bucky repeats. He thinks of the blind man on the sidewalk. Of his niece Laura, who lost her leg in Iraq. He thinks of the time when Pepper told him about Extremis and how it was used to try and regrow soldiers’ limbs.

“Yes,” Peggy says. “He was one of the first in the SSR to believe in me once the war was over. Now, are you going to introduce me to your friend, or are you going to be appallingly rude as well as ridiculous?”

Bucky doesn’t know why he smiles as he walks toward the bed. “This is Bucky Bear,” he says, placing the bear in Peggy’s hands. “Daddy gave him to me to keep me safe when I had bad dreams.”

“Pleased to meet you, Bucky Bear,” Peggy says, and Bucky Bear says that the pleasure is his.

*

“Just start at the beginning.” Steve makes it sound as if it isn’t the fifth time he’s said this, as if he hasn’t been sitting patiently on the bed for the past ten minutes as Bucky’s paced around saying next to nothing.

“‘When I woke up’—are you sure you don’t just want to read it?” Bucky asks, tearing his eyes away from the letter again. There are crease marks on the paper from his fingers. He holds it left-handed because his right hand is so sweaty. “I don’t read very well.”

“I’ll read it if you want me to,” Steve says, just as he’s said before. “But I think reading it out loud will help. You’ll hear how it flows.”

It’s going to sound stupid. Everything Bucky says sounds stupid. He bites his lip. “It has to be _perfect_.”

“It will be, Buck. We’ll get it there.”

This was all Bucky’s idea. He’d had the first inklings a week ago in DC, when Peggy had mentioned her amputee friend. By the time he and Steve had returned to the tower, it had grown into a full-fledged plan, and he’d asked to speak with Tony and Pepper immediately.

“My niece Laura,” he’d said, “With the leg. The—she lost her leg to an IED. Remember?” He was talking too fast, stumbling over his words. He took a breath, but before he could try again, Tony was talking.

“Yeah, we met her at the zoo. I made her a leg using some of the tech reverse-engineered from your arm. What about her, Buck?”

“I want to help people,” Bucky said. “Other soldiers, like her. Or people who lost their limbs to cancer or accidents or anything. I want—” He swallowed. “My arm—I want to help people who lost hands and stuff get prosthetics that work like mine. And when the SHIELD agents were here, Skye said HYDRA could put cameras in people’s eyes and transmit the video footage. Maybe there’s a way to transmit the footage back into a blind person’s brain. I want to see if we can do that. I want Stark Industries to help amputees and other disabled people, who could never afford prosthetics as high tech as mine.”

Pepper and Tony just looked at him. Neither of them said it was a stupid plan. They didn’t say anything, and he’d hoped that was a good sign.

“But I need your help,” he said. “I don’t know how to make prosthetics. And I don’t know how to pitch an idea like that to a company. I need somebody to make the technology, and somebody else to handle the business stuff.”

Pepper had cleared her throat, and Bucky’s heart sank. She was going to say no. She was busy being the CEO. Tony was busy making things for his company. Nobody was going to want an arm like the Winter Soldier’s anyway.

But what Pepper had said was “Okay.”

Bucky’s mouth had fallen open. “Really?”

“I can’t manage the initiative myself,” Pepper said. “But I can certainly get the board to agree, and put together a team to run it. I’ll make sure that all the funds are being allocated properly. And I can definitely get publicity for this. But you’ll have to work out exactly what you want to do, Bucky, and there’ll be a lot of paperwork involved.”

Bucky nodded. “I want to work with charities, the kind that help get veterans back on their feet or help people who can’t afford assistive tech, that kind of thing. Work with them so we can give these people custom prosthetics, either free of charge or as cheap as we can make them.”

He’d looked at Tony, who had already pulled up a holoscreen to jot down notes. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that. They can’t have the raw power that your arm has, of course, it’d be a liability and they want limbs, not weapons, but we can recreate the basic setup. With the 3D printers, it’ll go faster, and we’ll need custom measurements, but I can improve the way it fastens in, make it removable so that if a kid needs an upgrade as they’re growing, it won’t be a huge undertaking to switch it out. What you said about cameras, I can see if—”

“There’s something I want to know, Bucky,” Pepper had interrupted. “What is it that _you_ want to do for this project?”

“I figured I could write guides about how to take care of the prosthetics,” Bucky said. “Or—” He’d faltered, flushing. “Video tutorials, maybe. I could write letters for fundraising and do interviews by email, Reddit AMAs. Stuff like that.”

And now he’s here, squeezing the life out of the first letter he wrote to introduce the charity. He’s going to record himself reading it once it’s perfected, and then it’ll be shown at the press conference in a few weeks and made available on the Stark Industries website after that. Bucky won’t be at the press conference. He didn’t feel ready for that, and Cornelius and Miriam said that was fine.

“Bucky,” Steve says. He reaches out as Bucky paces past the bed and gently squeezes his flesh hand. “It’s just me here, okay? We can take this one step at a time.”

With a nod, Bucky clears his throat and begins to read.

“When I woke up for the first time after I fell from the train, I was scared and alone. My head hurt and I couldn’t feel my arm. I thought I was going to freeze to death and my family would never get to bury my body. I was drifting in and out of consciousness and suddenly, I wasn’t alone. Russian soldiers found me, and I was overjoyed. I thought I had been saved. I didn’t know then that they had no interest in the man they’d found, just in the potential weapon they’d gained.

“The next time I woke up, what was left of my arm was being amputated. It hurt and no one would tell me what was happening. I lay there and watched as part of my body got cut away without my consent. It hurt so bad that I fainted. And the next time I opened my eyes, I had a new arm I never asked for.

“It was heavy and it hurt. It looked like something out of a monster movie to me. The doctors were happy that I was able to move it. They tried to explain what an amazing piece of technology it was, but I didn’t care. I was so angry and afraid that I tried to choke the doctor who was closest to me. That time, they used sedatives to stop me. Later, after I was tortured and brainwashed, all they had to say was ‘Stop’ and I’d let them perform any medical procedure, no matter how invasive or painful. They upgraded my arm over the years, almost never with anesthesia. They didn’t care if they hurt me. They only cared about improving their weapon. They called me ‘the asset’ or ‘the fist of HYDRA.’ To them, I was a nameless tool.

“HYDRA treated my whole body like it was their property for decades. My friends, the Avengers, nearly died trying to save me. I owe them my life and my freedom. But even once I was safe from HYDRA, I still felt like a monster. I’d look in the mirror and all I could see was the lives I’d taken and the people I’d hurt. In my first week at the Avengers’ Tower, I tried to cut off my prosthetic arm. I can’t remember why now. I can’t even remember trying to do it. Before my doctors were able to find the right mix of medications to help me, I used to suffer absence seizures and lose periods of time. But I think I know what probably made me want to cut my arm off. Here was a visual reminder of what HYDRA had made me, and the literal scars that they left. Why wouldn’t I want it gone?

“Little by little, with the help of my friends and my doctors, I began to heal. I learned that I was more than just a weapon or a plaything. I was a person, and I was more than the things I had suffered. And as they helped me, I realized that I wanted to help people too. My best friend, Steve Rogers, used to do these great USO performances that I’m sure he wishes I’d never remembered. In them, he’d say ‘Not all of us can storm a beach or drive a tank, but there’s still a way all of us can fight.’ Steve was talking about buying war bonds, but I think that’s true about life itself.

“I don’t want to be a soldier anymore. But I don’t want to spend life hiding away from my past either. It was easier at first, but if I have the chance to help and I don’t take it, what kind of man does that make me? That is why, with the help and generosity of my friends Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, I am proud to announce the Winifred-George Initiative.

“Beginning today, Stark Industries will be teaming up with half a dozen charities, including Life and Limb as well as The Wounded Patriot Project, to provide disabled veterans and other amputees with free prosthetics reverse-engineered from the technology that created my own arm. These prosthetics will have full mobility, and their recipients will be able to feel temperature, pressure, and limited sensation within their prostheses. The limbs will require no more conscious thought and effort to move than a natural body part would take. We are also researching assistive devices for other disabilities, such as false eyes that can transmit detailed visual information into the brain.

“These prosthetics will be lighter than my own. They will not cause the recipients any pain. I was made into the fist of HYDRA. Now I’m going to use that technology to improve lives instead of destroying them. I don’t want to look at my arm and see a monster anymore. Nor do I want others who have lost body parts and can’t afford prosthetics to think of themselves as monstrous or broken. With the help of Stark Industries and, hopefully, compassionate supporters, I want to start giving back to the world that I’ve harmed so much. I want to help everybody suffering to feel whole again. And I ask for your help to do this.

“Sincerely, James Buchanan Barnes.”

Bucky looks up from the paper. “What do you think? Is it good?”

Steve smiles, wiping at his eyes with his sleeve. “Yeah, Bucky. It’s perfect.”

**Author's Note:**

> All spelling and grammatical errors in the Internet comments are intentional.
> 
> The two charities that Bucky names within his letter are fictional.
> 
> Winifred and George Barnes were the names of Bucky's parents.
> 
> Check out this lovely APSHDS-inspired fic: [What I Could Be](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5221409/chapters/12039863) by [VoiceOfNurse](http://archiveofourown.org/users/VoiceOfNurse/pseuds/VoiceOfNurse)


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